"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

April 30, 2009

The unseasonably warm weather we have experienced here in the Litchfield Hills over the last few days has really given a kick start to Spring. Many of the bulbs, ephemeral wildflowers and trees are leafing out and bursting into bloom at least 10 days ahead of where they were last year at this time. Temperatures are now more in line, with chilly nights and days in the low 60s, but already one's thoughts turn to spaded earth and seedlings in soil thta may yet experience a hard frost before it is safe for summer garden glories like tomatoes and basil that I await with great pleasure.

I can smell the smoke of someone burning brush through my open office window. These early Spring days are precisely the wrong time to spark up a burn pile, with tinder dry lands and strong winds ready to carry embers and fan the flames. It is a good time, however to burn invasive barberry, which has just expended its energy reserves in a first flush of green and will have a hard time bouncing back from a good scorching.

Tomorrow is Mayday and this weekend is therefore the one time of the year when the women of Bryn Mawr College revel in white. I have fond memories of maypoles on the green, strawberries and cream for breakfast and frolics on the grass from my years at Haverford and as a "Bryn Man".

January 12, 2009

I happened upon an 1885 History of Berkshire County and discovered a passage relating to farming in New Marlboro, but just as applicable elsewhere in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills during the late 19th century:

"...agriculture just now, especially in the eastern portion of the town, is suffering a strange and painful decline. Many homesteads have been sold for for less than the cost of their buildings, and others, the dwelling, the outbuildings, and most of the fences virtually abandoned, are being used as large pasture tracts. The famous saying that the first settlers feared that they could not find enough stone for building purposes, now when boulders covers o large part of the surface, seems incomprehensible. Perhaps these stones were regarded as unsuitable for building, or more probably they were then covered with vegetable mold and have since been heaved to the surface by frosts which strike deeper than when the earth was protected by forests. Many hundred acres formerly yielding fine crops of hay cannot now be mowed, much less plowed. As a consequence of this, and perhaps also because of the exhaustion of certain elements of the soil, there appeared, about forty years ago, a shrubby growth known as hard hack (Potentilla fruticosa) and steeple top (Spirea tomentosa), the two growing together, and this growth now covers entire farms, destroying even much of the pasture. This is one of the most discouraging features of New Marlboro farming, since to clear the land of boulders and hard hack would cost more than its present, or subsequent value. Much of this land, moreover, would require to be underdrained. nature is providing some compensation in covering much of this land with a growth of pine, which destroys the hard hack and may soon become valuable for timber.

The author of the New Marlboro chapter of the History of Berkshire County, Professor S. T. Frost, is a keen observer who recognizes many of the patterns and processes - both natural and social - that affected the landscape of his day. Some of the rural communities of western New England lost more than half their populations in the decades after the Civil War, as the availability of more fertile western lands and urban migration combined with the collapse of the local iron industry and decline of agriculture in a perfect storm of cultural, economic and ecological disturbance.

The plants he describes as invading the abandoned farmlands are actually native to our region rather than introduced exotics, but behaved invasively in the absence of competition in the wet meadows that were no longer farmed. Potentilla fruticosa, more commonly known today as Shrubby cinquefoil , is a calcium-loving wetland indicator species in the marble valleys of the Housatonic watershed. Steeplebush (Hardhack) usually occurs in wetlands as well. Neither species provides good grazing (even today, deer avoid browsing cinquefoil), so in addition to the factors mentioned for their spread, the use of former cropland as pasture might have encouraged the growth of these species until they out-competed the available forage. Although he would not have though to use this term, Professor Frost is describing the impact of a lack of stewardship on the condition of previously managed lands.

Pasture pines invading abandoned fields became a regular feature of the changing New England landscape. Anytime I find myself walking through a stand of mature white pine and nothing else, I am certain that they grew to maturity as a plantation or in an open field. The forest that reclaimed these previously managed lands is different in species composition and structure, the attributes of its soil and the habitat it provides, than that which had been first cleared for settlement. Some of the bird species that would have been abundant during the height of agriculture in our region - meadowlarks, bobolinks, and a host of other grassland birds - are in parabolic decline as the land reforests. Others like the wild turkey that would have been rare in Professor Frost's day are now thriving and expanding their numbers.

The very next passage in this history anticipates the state of real estate affairs in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills 125 years later:

"This present unfortunate condition of New Marlboro agriculture must be temporary. When the best portions of the West, now being taken up so rapidly, are occupied, these deserted lands must become valuable, both for their locality and their producing power."

Proximity to major metropolitan centersin New York, and to a lesser degree Hartford, has made our land valuable as residential real estate. A renewed interest in locally-produced food and concern about the loss of our remaining farmland to non-agricultural uses runs up against the hard fact that the land is worth more in a developed state than as farmland, and is too expensive for new farmers to obtain. Meanwhile, Berkshire County is losing population and Connecticut is hemorrhaging an exodus of young people at one of the highest rates in the nation. We have saved many significant lands from development but are unable to maintain them in a condition which will ensure that the very qualities that made them special will persist over time. Without the resources to care for and steward our fields and forests, they are vulnerable to fresh degradation from invasive species and to loss of ecological productivity.

We should expect more changes in this altered landscape, not all of it for the worse. Frost reports that "the fox and the raccoon are the largest game that now survives civilization." Today we share our backyards with bears.

November 25, 2008

I am a good negotiator. I have good instincts for what is core and cannot be compromised, and what is negotiable or can be given up. I understand needs and recognize motivations, even when they are not articulated or are acting subconsciously. I study human and institutional behavior, and have learned to measure negotiating success both in terms of tangible gains and intangible benefits.

There are times when it is better not to insist on a legal right when it costs your reputation to secure it. It may, in fact, be better not to win every hand and to leave something on the table, because otherwise you may never get another chance to play.

This is a particularly sticky area for locally-based organizations that need to maintain the goodwill of their supporters and of the communities in which they work in order to be effective and viable. Some conservation organizations have gotten into trouble by failing to defend the easements they hold for fear of alienating an important donor or exhausting their limited resources in a protracted legal battle. Others have defended their prerogatives so vigorously that they have turned public opinion against them.

If you know what is core and immutable - and this should not be a long list - it is easier to get beyond positions to actual needs. A landowner insisting on a high price for selling family land for conservation may be motivated by more than financial value, including the emotions involved with being the one who ended up selling the family asset. Seller's remorse is a real factor even for conservation-minded sellers, but this gets missed if all the conservation buyer sees is an inflexible price and a stubborn owner.

I remember a situation when I was with The Nature Conservancy where we had the legal right to enter State conservation lands and apply herbicide to invasive plants over a very wide area. In one community - a community that happened to be 2/3 permanently protected open space - there was strong and vocal opposition to our exercising this right. It was clear that we could have accomplished our conservation objectives for invasive species control if we had insisted on our legal right to spray. It was also clear that our other, greater objectives for working with willing landowners in that town to conserve key parcels of land would be irreparably damaged if we did so. Showing the community that we could be responsive to local desires and sensibilities gave us a wealth of credibility - one of those intangible benefits - even though the invasive species control we were undertaking would fall short of our initial expectations. Ecologically, we would still be on track for managing the resource and abating the invasive threat if we applied the program in other adjacent towns where they were more receptive to herbicide. Once we got away from whether we had the stronger legal case, it allowed us to deescalate a stand-off that threatened our reputation and instead gained us respect with precisely the constituents who were rallying in opposition. To me, that was a winning outcome.

The difference between what is fair in the court of public opinion and what wins in court is sometimes a critical consideration. Sometimes you need to defend your legal rights without compromise. The ability to tell one situation from another makes for good negotiations.

September 29, 2008

I had a day out on the land - an increasingly rare event during the work week as I become progressively more executive and therefore bound to desks and meetings. I made the time to volunteer with a bunch of high school students clearing trails and removing invasive species along our local greenway. There was ample opportunity during the course of the day to experience what is refreshing and what is exasperating about the adolescent mindset. It was a good group of kids, all told, and time well spent.

We ended up spending most of our time uprooting invasive plants. The sweet soils of Canaan's valleys are overloaded with introduced exotics. In one small trail section we confronted masses of shrubby honeysuckles - those promiscuous Asian species that hybridize with abandon and whose only serious competition comes from other invasives, among them Japanese barberry, winged euonymous, glossy buckthorn and Asiatic bittersweet. All of these plants can tolerate shaded conditions, and in tern out compete the native flora that might otherwise have flourished.

"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone When woods are bare and birds have flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. "Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall."

There were scores of fringed gentians in the glades and seeps along the trail, as good a reminder as any of what what all this effort to knock back the weeds is all about.

August 17, 2008

The best way I know to absolutely kill an otherwise cheerful conversation over cocktails (aside from gross breaches of decorum) is to tell your companions that just about every tree species they know and love is poised to succumb to a devastating plague. Colleagues of mine involved in the desperate fight to halt the spread of invasive pests and pathogens like Emerald Ash Borer and Asian Longhorned Beetle admit that the best, and perhaps only hope we have to to try and get really good at containment of existing infestations, with a robust investment in early detection and rapid response for new outbreaks. All that will do is by time, and we need at least a decade before an effective biological control for the worst pests may be possible with a reasonably good chance that whatever good bug is introduced to eat the bad ones doesn't change its eating habits. It is a slim hope, and real containment is virtually impossible to maintain.

"ALB is a serious pest problem in China, where it causes significant economic loss in poplar plantations. So far all ALB infestations in the US have been found in suburban and urban environments. However, in the US where millions of acres of contiguous hardwood forests occur, the impact of ALB is unknown but could be devastating."

In the early 1900s, an introduced fungus virtually eliminated American Chestnut from the forests of the Eastern United States. In mid century, Dutch Elm Disease killed nearly half the mature American Elm trees in America. Both are still with us. Asian Longhorned Beetle has the potential to be the tree killer of our generation.

June 30, 2008

I am flattered to be profiled with an interview today at a blog and environmental forum called My Greenpeace Buddies. I was approached to share my thoughts as a blogger who writes about ecological matters, among other things, and was happy to oblige.

Given my strong preference to focus on areas of common interest rather than positions - except in those cases where reason is clearly out of the question, such as where a certain southern African dictator is concerned - the interview goes strongly down the path of being "occasionally nettlesome" but "fairly non-partisan". I talked about how individuals and institutions change their behavior and some of what is and is not helpful in that regard.

I suspect this may be the only time that my right-of-center cousin Tigerhawk gets an acknowledgment in this or indeed any environmental forum. Anything for bilateral relations, dear readers. And yes, I do know the difference between "affect" and "effect"...just not when I wrote out my responses. Plus, I found an opportunity to quote from The Last of the Mohicans and it wasn't anything about noble savages. Fellow English Majors can rest easy that my undergraduate degree is in no immediate danger of revocation. Mugabe's, however, is another question.

June 14, 2008

This is a great story. HMS Ontario, a revolutionary war era ship, has has been found intact at the bottom of its namesake lake. She went down with all hands in a fearsome gale on October 31, 1780.

The 80ft sloop of war sank with more than 120 men, women, children and prisoners on board during the American revolutionary war in October 1780. Bad weather rather than cannon fire put paid to her. As she was crossing the lake from Fort Niagara a gale swamped her decks and sent her to the bottom.

The following day some of her boats and hatch covers drifted ashore, along with a few hats. A few days later her sails were found adrift. It was a further nine months before six bodies were washed up 20 miles away.

The ship is in deep water, in such an extraordinary state of preservation that two of its windows are still in place and its masts still stand 70 feet above the deck. It would be in even better shape were it not for the invasive zebra mussels that infest the great lakes, Lake Champlain and ever more US waterways and encrust the wreck. Canadian author and historian Arthur Britton Smith said;

“If it wasn’t for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week.”

And Jim Kennard, who with his partner Dan Scoville found the wreck, said;

"Eight of the 22 guns were on the deck. Some are still in place. You can't see the others because the gun ports are closed. It's hard even to see the ports because the hull has a lot of mussels on it. The most prominent parts of the ship are the quarter galleries, a sort of windowed balcony, one at each side of the stern. That was the captain's quarters."

Nasty things, those mussels.

HMS Ontario, a 22 gun brig sloop, is the oldest confirmed shipwreck ever found in the lakes, and its discovery is an incredible achievement. It is considered a war grave and though it lies in US territorial waters somewhere between Rochester New York and Niagara, it is still British property. And the mussels.

May 17, 2008

Instead of crying in your increasingly expensive beer, time to get in early on the hop revival. People may cut back in other areas when times are tight, but they are unlikely to give up beer. There was a time when central New York was the leading hop producing region in the country - 1879 and 1880 yields peaked at over 60 million pounds per year. Downy mildew, aphids and Prohibition killed the crop, but new vigorous varieties and pest control strategies mean that hops could be viable in the Northeast United States once more. And now with a worldwide hops crisis, demand could make this a very wise investment. Some craft brewers are now growing their own hops.

Doubtless there are processing and quality control issues to work out, but if I had 10-20 agricultural acres, I'd be planting hops (though not the invasive Japanese variety). And if the market should suddenly become glutted, there is always cellulosic ethanol.

April 08, 2008

I am used to thinking about invasive species in a negative light. If the first blush of spring is dappling our woodlands, you can be sure it is not from native ephemeral wildflowers but from the sickly green of Asian honeysuckles, Japanese barberry and overwintering garlic mustard poised to explode and smother. When one of these "botanical thugs" turns out to have a potentially beneficial aspect as well, it is a good reminder that good and bad are not attributes of species but value judgments that we make based on their behavior.

Another sign of Spring in these parts is the emergence of disease bearing ticks looking for their first blood feed of the season. I picked one up on a lovely walk in the woods last Saturday, and today have the telltale bullseye of Lyme Disease.

At the doctor's office this morning, I learned that in addition to a heavy course of Doxycycline, there is an herbal treatment for Lyme that includes Polygonum cuspidatum - Japanese knotweed.

"The three main herbs [and two supplemental herbs] in the core protocol - andrographis, Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) and cat's claw (Unicaria tomentosa) [astragalus and smilax] - will significantly lower or eliminate spirochete loads in the body (including central nervous system and brain), raise immune function in ways that will specifically empower the body to respond to borrelia infection (such as raising CD57 white blood counts), and significantly alleviate the primary symptoms of Lyme disease - brain fog and confusion, lethargy, arthritic inflammation, heart problems, and skin involvement."

This example of Buhner's prose may be somewhat tortured - parenthesis, brackets and dashes, oh my - but the medicinal potential of knotweed may cause me to reevaluate my opinion of this species. I was aware that young knotweed shoots can be used in pies as an ersatz rhubarb, but if an 8-12 month course of knotweed supplements helps with Lyme, then we've got plenty of the whole herb growing around here that I'd love to see go into capsules and out to herbalists and homeopaths where it can do some good for a change.